What can I expect when beginning my first sourdough?

ooh, fun! ~follows~

Let me know, as I’ve been thinking of this very thing myself. As I understand it, it won’t take up any more room than the crock in which you keep it. That’s what I’m waiting for. It should be opaque.

How much room should I expect the dough to take up in my kitchen?

Wow, like how big is this starter, sounds kind of dangerous.
Seriously, I used to bake sourdough bread and kept the starter in the refrigerator, I hardly noticed it there, very low profile. No funny stories sorry, the bread was perfect. I used the recipe from the The Tassajara Bread Book by Edward Espe Brown and I heartily recommend the sourdough pancakes too, wonderful.
Have fun @laureth, sourdough bread is great stuff!

@Adagio – my husband tells me a horror story about his first wife’s sourdough. She didn’t keep it in the ‘fridge, just out on a table. It was soon as big as the dining room table. They called it “the dough that ate [city they lived in].” I wanted to make sure I wouldn’t have any such problem! :)

@laureth Something tells me that perhaps your husband is exaggerating taking just a little storyteller’s licence, it does make a great story though Tell me, has he ever considered writing horror film scripts? just a thought

He’s truthful on other things, though. The rest of the details were that the ex-wife simply fed it all the time, many times a day, and didn’t put it in any kind of container. <shrug>

If a warm, constantly fed (with like a grocery-store bag of flour every day or three) ball of sourdough really got going and she didn’t have the know-how to stop feeding the darn thing, I could see it go a little nuts. She was cutting part off to bake every day.